Nikolaus Forgo: What Covid-19 has taught us on how to teach and think about Data Protection in Europe

What Covid-19 has (not) taught us on how to teach and think (about Data Protection) in Europe was the topic raised by Nikolaus Forgo, Professor of IT and IP Law, Universität Wien, Head of the Department of Innovation and Digitalisation in Law at Digitalize in Stockholm 2022. In his talk, Forgo analysed how the pandemic has influenced legal thinking and teaching, particularly in the privacy and data protection domains. The perspective of this talk is academic, with a German-speaking background. Emphasis is given to data collection, data quality, data sharing and interpretation issues more than ten years after the presentation of GDPR by the European Commission in January 2012. An outlook on interpreting the developments in light of ongoing debates on the platform(s) and AI regulation is made.

Nikolaus Forgo

• Born in 1968 in Vienna
• Law Studies in Vienna and Paris
• 1990 – 2000 University Assistant at the Faculty of Law of the University of Vienna and its IT representative
• 1998 Founder and ever since the head of the Postgraduate Program for Information- and Media Law at the University of Vienna
• 2000 – 2017 Professor for IT-Law and Legal Informatics at Leibniz University Hannover
• 2007 – 2017 Head of the Institute for Legal Informatics at Leibniz University Hannover
• 2013 – 2017 Director of the Research Center L3s
• 2013 – 2017 Data Protection Officer of Leibniz University Hannover
• 2015 – 2017 Chief Information Officer of Leibniz University Hannover
• Since March 2017 Member of the Digitalisation Council of Lower Saxony
• Since October 2017 Professor for IT- and IP Law at the University of Vienna, Department of Innovation and Digitalisation in Law
• Since July 2018 Expert member of the Data Protection Council of the Republic of Austria
• Extensive dogmatic and third-party funded research for European, German and Austrian clients regarding questions of IT law, in particular data protection and data security law.
• Evaluation and consulting activities, i.a., for the European Commission, the German Research Foundation, the German Ethics Council, and various German and Austrian ministries.